And the common sentiment I see is that we're more than willing to buy stuff from them, they just need to supply stuff that actually looks like the current ponies do (like the set above). The vast, vast majority of the toys and merch is the older-style pony bodies and whatnot, with color changes for the new cast. Which aren't even always right (I believe they have a purple Celestia). One of the things I really like about the current show is the art style (I find the older generations to be pretty ugly and borderline creepy), and Hasbro really needs to start going with it in their wares.

Just watched the first episode. One thing I'm struck by is how much the characters are like characters in a fantasy story that was written with a more specifically male audience in mind. Why? Because most of the principle characters spent little if any time talking about or thinking about the opposite sex. Consider Lord of the Rings, for example. In that, the majority of main protagonists, i.e. the Fellowship, are male. How many times do anyone in the Fellowship even mention females when there are not females specifically present? Aragorn sings a song about an elf lady, and Gimli pines over Galadriel for a little bit, but only immediately after leaving Lothlorien, and that's about it. Well, and Gollum mentions Shelob before they meet her, but since Shelob is a spider that eats people, she doesn't really count.

Anyway, back to My Little Pony, (which is a sentence I never thought I'd ever write), in fact the lead characters don't talk about or do a lot of things that are stereotypically female. I don't recall any of them mentioning shopping, and there's only one character who talks about things like clothes and fashion and makeup and that kind of stuff, and that's only because she's that kind of character, and probably would be that kind of character even if she were a male. It's an intelligent, witty fantasy series with a group of strong* three-dimensional non-stereotypical female characters. I like it, but the cynic in me wonders how long it'll be before the writers are forced to dumb it down and make the characters more stereotypical and shallow, all for the sake of "appealing to a larger audience".